Designing with Children: Reflections on Effective Involvement of Children in the Interaction Design Process

This 
thesis 
contributes 
to 
the
 discussion 
around
 the 
practice
 of
co-design 
with 
children 
by 
providing 
support 
for 
reflections 
to
 practitioners. 
The
 framework
 that 
derived
 from
 this
 research 
aims 
to 
increase 
the
 awareness 
on 
the 
implications 
the 
different 
aspects
 involved 
on
 co‐design
 session 
have
 on 
its 
outcome. 
Researchers 
with 
little 
experience
 in
 managing 
co‐ design
 sessions
 can 
benefit 
from 
it
 when
 deciding
 on 
their 
co‐design 
strategies

Are there communicative intentions?

Grice in pragmatics and Levelt in psycholinguistics have proposed models of human communication where the starting point of communicative action is an individual intention. This assumption, though, has to face serious objections with regard to the alleged existence of explicit representations of the communicative goals to be pursued. Here evidence is surveyed which shows that in fact speaking may ordinarily be a quite automatic activity prompted by contextual cues and driven by behavioural schemata abstracted away from social regularities. On the one hand, this means that there could exist no intentions in the sense of explicit representations of communicative goals, following from deliberate reasoning and triggering the communicative action. On the other hand, however, there are reasons to allow for a weaker notion of intention than this, according to which communication is an intentional affair, after all. Communicative action is said to be intentional in this weaker sense to the extent that it is subject to a double mechanism of control, with respect both to present-directed and future-directed intentions

Bringing tabletop technologies to kindergarten children

Taking computer technology away from the desktop and into a more physical, manipulative space, is known that provide many benefits and is generally considered to result in a system that is easier to learn and more natural to use. This paper describes a design solution that allows kindergarten children to take the benefits of the new pedagogical possibilities that tangible interaction and tabletop technologies offer for manipulative learning. After analysis of children's cognitive and psychomotor skills, we have designed and tuned a prototype game that is suitable for children aged 3 to 4 years old. Our prototype uniquely combines low cost tangible interaction and tabletop technology with tutored learning. The design has been based on the observation of children using the technology, letting them freely play with the application during three play sessions. These observational sessions informed the design decisions for the game whilst also confirming the children's enjoyment of the prototype

Gesti co-verbali e immagini mentali: i confini dell’intenzione comunicativa

Riassunto: Le immagini mentali sono parte delle intenzioni comunicative veicolate negli scambi verbali, e dunque del significato inteso dal parlante (Grice)? Questioni simili sono state dibattute con riferimento al paradigma dell’embodiment. Qui intendiamo muoverci su un terreno differente: il dominio dei gesti, con particolare riferimento a quelli rappresentativi, caratterizzati dallo stretto rapporto con le rappresentazioni senso-motorie delle azioni. La linea argomentativa sarà dunque bipartita. Innanzitutto, intendiamo mostrare che i gesti contribuiscono a determinare l’intenzione comunicativa, come è evidente in casi nei quali il parlante si impegna in modo manifesto a renderli salienti – ma qui sarà anche importante l’osservazione che l’intenzione comunicativa non va identificata con una preliminare pianificazione cosciente. In secondo luogo, argomenteremo che il contributo dei gesti all’intenzione comunicativa è genuinamente imagistic, non proposizionale. In particolare, esamineremo due argomenti solitamente presentati come a favore dell’ipotesi proposizionale: che le immagini non possono essere parte dell’intenzione comunicativa, rispettivamente, perché non portano un contenuto giudicabile in termini di vero/falso, e perché non consentono di effettuare inferenze. Vedremo che entrambe le argomentazioni sono discutibili.Parole chiave: Intenzione comunicativa; Gesti rappresentativi; Imagery; Significato del parlante Co-verbal Gestures and Mental Images: The Borders of Communicative Intentions Abstract: Do mental images form part of a speaker’s communicative intention? This and similar questions have usually been addressed within the framework of embodied cognition. Here, instead, we want to address the question from a different point of view, examining representational gestures, which are characterised by their strong relationship to sensory-motor representations. For this reason, our argument takes two directions. First, we show that representational gestures can form part of a speaker’s communicative intention as, for example, when the speaker overtly makes them salient. However, it is important to point out that being part of a communicative intention is not equivalent to being consciously planned. Secondly, we will argue that the meaning carried by gestures is actually imagistic, and not propositional. To this end, we provide a detailed discussion of two arguments favouring the propositional hypothesis: that images cannot be part of the speaker’s communicative intention because their content is not truth-conditional and because they do not allow us to make inferences. We will show that both these arguments are debatable.Keywords: Communicative Intentions; Representational Gestures; Imagery; Speaker’s Meanin

Post-Thyroidectomy Hypocalcemia: Timing of Discharge Based on Serum Calcium Levels

Purpose: The study concerns about the evaluation of Calcium serum levels in patients who underwent total thyroidectomy. Our previous experience underlined how patients who had levels of serum Calcium more than 9 mg/dl at the first day after surgery, did not show Hypocalcemia in the next days,so that this value could be considered a good cut-off for the decision of an early discharge. With regards to this experience, the aim of our current study was to confirm the effective feasibility of an early discharge based on the levels of serum Calcium at the first post-operative day. Patients and Methods: Our study included 102 consecutive patients (82 F; 20 M, age with a range between 14-78 year sold, average 52.6) that were submitted to total thyroidectomy in the years 2010 to 2014, performed by the same operator and all done with sutureless technique (Ligasure precise©) We classify hypocalcemia, according to their normal range (8.6 to 10.4 mg/dl), in mild (not less than 7.6 mg/dL), moderate (between 7.5 mg/dL and 7 mg/dL) and severe (less than 7 mg/dL) We classified the normal range of serum Calcium between 8.6 mg/dl and 10.4 mg/dl. Patients that showed levels of serum Calcium under this limit (<8.6 mg/dl) were treated with 6 fials of Gluconate Calcium 40 mEq in 500 ml of saline solution NaCl 0.9% i.v. (one per day), until the return to the normal range. Patients who had serum Calcium levels more than 9 mg/dl at the first post-operative days, and did not have other complications, were discharged at the same day and revaluated after 7 days. Discussion and Conclusion: Moreover our study has been useful to confirm what we observed in the previous experience, that levels of serum Calcium more than 9 mg/dl at the first postoperative day can be considered a feasible cut-off to exclude the appearance of hypocalcaemia in future. Therefore, according to our results, we assume to propose an early discharge for the patients who have serum Calcium levels more than 9 mg/dl, asking them to come back for controls one week after discharge

Clinical Features, Short-Term Mortality, and Prognostic Risk Factors of Septic Patients Admitted to Internal Medicine Units: Results of an Italian Multicenter Prospective Study

Only a few studies provided data on the clinical history of sepsis within internal Medicine units.The aim of the study was to assess the short-term mortality and to evaluate the prognostic risk factors in a large cohort of septic patients treated in internal medicine units.Thirty-one internal medicine units participated to the study. Within each participating unit, all admitted patients were screened for the presence of sepsis.A total of 533 patients were included; 78 patients (14.6%, 95%CI 11.9, 18.0%) died during hospitalization; mortality rate was 5.5% (95% CI 3.1, 9.6%) in patients with nonsevere sepsis and 20.1% (95%CI 16.2, 28.8%) in patients with severe sepsis or septic shock. Severe sepsis or septic shock (OR 4.41, 95%CI 1.93, 10.05), immune system weakening (OR 2.10, 95%CI 1.12, 3.94), active solid cancer (OR 2.14, 95% CI 1.16, 3.94), and age (OR 1.03 per year, 95% CI 1.01, 1.06) were significantly associated with an increased mortality risk, whereas blood culture positive for Escherichia coli was significantly associated with a reduced mortality risk (OR 0.46, 95%CI 0.24, 0.88).In-hospital mortality of septic patients treated in internal medicine units appeared similar to the mortality rate obtained in recent studies conducted in the ICU setting

Small CCI – Exploring App Evaluation with Preschoolers

Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) is predominantly studied with school aged children. Working with preschool children, generally unable to read or write, involves addressing many challenges around planning, recruitment, and interpretation of findings. There are few examples in the literature of the challenges faced when conducting evaluations of technology with preschool children and very few evaluations conducted for commercial software companies. Our case study paper describes a six-week, twelve session, evaluation study of a commercial app (Lingokids) with children aged three and four in two nursery (preschool / kindergarten) schools. We describe challenges we met and describe how we adapted our plans to fit the context. We show how we were able to explore engagement and learning without gathering any personal data. With our practical tips and reflections, we hope our work will encourage others to work with young children in ways that respect their limited ability to understand assent and participation

Benefits of glucocorticoids in non-ambulant boys/men with Duchenne muscular dystrophy: A multicentric longitudinal study using the Performance of Upper Limb test

The aim of this study was to establish the possible effect of glucocorticoid treatment on upper limb function in a cohort of 91 non-ambulant DMD boys and adults of age between 11 and 26 years. All 91 were assessed using the Performance of Upper Limb test. Forty-eight were still on glucocorticoid after loss of ambulation, 25 stopped steroids at the time they lost ambulation and 18 were GC naive or had steroids while ambulant for less than a year. At baseline the total scores ranged between 0 and 74 (mean 41.20). The mean total scores were 47.92 in the glucocorticoid group, 36 in those who stopped at loss of ambulation and 30.5 in the naive group (p <0.001). The 12-month changes ranged between -20 and 4 (mean -4.4). The mean changes were -3.79 in the glucocorticoid group, -5.52 in those who stopped at loss of ambulation and -4.44 in the naive group. This was more obvious in the patients between 12 and 18 years and at shoulder and elbow levels. Our findings suggest that continuing glucocorticoids throughout teenage years and adulthood after loss of ambulation appears to have a beneficial effect on upper limb function. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

Reliability of the Performance of Upper Limb assessment in Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Abstract The Performance of Upper Limb was specifically designed to assess upper limb function in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The aim of this study was to assess (1) a cohort of typically developing children from the age of 3 years onwards in order to identify the age when the activities assessed in the individual items are consistently achieved, and (2) a cohort of 322 Duchenne children and young adults to establish the range of findings at different ages. We collected normative data for the scale validation on 277 typically developing subjects from 3 to 25 years old. A full score was consistently achieved by the age of 5 years. In the Duchenne cohort there was early involvement of the proximal muscles and a proximal to distal progressive involvement. The scale was capable of measuring small distal movements, related to activities of daily living, even in the oldest and weakest patients. Our data suggest that the assessment can be reliably used in both ambulant and non ambulant Duchenne patients in a multicentric setting and could therefore be considered as an outcome measure for future trials